Maggie s funny festive helper - The West Australian

In fact, the effervescent comedian/actress describes herself as a “disastrous” cook, preferring to leave the family’s home-cooked meals in the capable hands of her husband, British comedian Dan Thomas.

“Let me tell you that cooking and I are not regular friends,” the 44-year-old told Access All Areas with a laugh. “The kitchen is not one of my signature locations.

“My beautiful husband, he plans the menu, he’s got it all on a checklist and everything.”

So, was it wise then for Nine to hand-pick Morris as Maggie Beer’s kitchen sidekick for Sunday’s Christmas with Australian Women’s Weekly special?

“I tell you, Maggie was so gentle with me,” she said. “Just seeing how she prepared the meal I think gave me a little bit of confidence to think that I could do it by myself. They kept it so simple for me and the taste that she created was out of this world.”

Although the annual festive feast is generally left up to Thomas — which Morris said varied from “a cooked chook, to duck to some Sao biscuits” — after working alongside Beer, the mother of two might give Christmas dinner a crack this year.

“The only thing is, if he has any sort of inkling that any gift of mine is unfolding in the kitchen, it will blow my no-cooking cover,” she joked.

Topping off what has been a stellar year for Morris, whose debut drama role on Nine’s House Husbands was praised by critics and will see her return to the small screen next year for season two, she is gearing up to relocate the family from Sydney to Melbourne, where the show is filmed.

And it will be a sigh of relief for Morris, who described travelling back and forth between the two cities while filming the first series as a nightmare.

“I’ve got to tell you, it genuinely nearly killed me,” she explained. “You can’t be commuting to another State with two little children, it just doesn’t work, so something had to give and the location of where we live was the thing that had to be surrendered.”

Christmas with the Australian Women’s Weekly airs 6.30pm Sunday on Nine/WIN. VANESSA WILLIAMS